Without Words
by DXM Junkie
Summary: The more time they spent not talking about it, the more comfortable John felt about this whole shagging his mad flatmate thing. Johnlock.


John was a practical, rather simple man. He liked his tea hot, biscuits crumbly and flat tidy. He enjoyed watching rugby on the telly, reading mystery novels and having the occasional pint with Greg. Keeping regular sleeping hours (or trying) and eating health-conscious meals were important to him since he was a doctor. John's bedroom was minimalistic and spotless, his clothes bland but comfortable and functional.

Sherlock was not a practical or simple man. If you suggested that he was, well, you'd have a vicious verbal lashing waiting for you. He was dramatic and moody almost all the time, except when he was engaged in a puzzle or mystery.

Occasionally, John wondered why the pair fit together so well, why they worked.

Debates around asking Sherlock what he thought were promptly shut down. John knew he'd either not like the answer he was given or the detective would deflect the question. Sherlock did not talk about emotions, except when mocking their defaults in other people. He sometimes taunted John over similar things, but not as often and not as viciously.

Sherlock Holmes was an intensely private person. He kept his words guarded and wasn't garrulous on subjects pertaining to his past. Whenever something slipped John caught it. Through scraps of conversation and responses John knew Sherlock's demons. As it happened, John detested thinking about his own past, especially the military.

They didn't talk about it. Conversations were kept firmly in the present as they spent their weeks taking cases, visiting crime scenes and haunting the morgue at St. Bart's.

When they had sex for the first time, John thought he'd well and truly ruined everything.

Through the rush of adrenaline and the sticky sweat and the furious kisses they found a ragged and violent completion in one another's arms. The sex was glorious, remarkably aggressive and just the way John liked it. After they were sated, Sherlock wandered off to the loo and John fell asleep in his room and woke up alone. Sherlock was playing his violin in the sitting room so John made tea. They didn't talk about it. They went on like it never happened, took the next case and ran themselves ragged.

His sleeping schedule was shot, his meals now primarily take-away, his tea often lukewarm and his biscuits constantly absconded by Sherlock when he wasn't looking. The flat smelled like sulfur and kitchen sink was covered in questionable goo. It was as if he'd woken in a nightmare and found that the things which used to scare the shit out of him now continually reminded him that he was alive and that his world hadn't ended with that goddamn bullet.

Sherlock scorned sentiment with such a heady passion that John knew better then to fall for him. He still took girls on dates, still managed a good pull every few months, still flirted at crime scenes. And then sometimes, not often, he'd fuck Sherlock stupid in their flat or an ally or a toilet stall at Scotland Yard. He was a right emotional masochist.

The detective was glorious during these encounters, he would kiss dirty and messy and bite hard with violin-calloused fingers playing the strings of John's body effortlessly. He was fit, shite, was Sherlock fit. Deceivingly skinny but firm with muscle and lean and graceful and fuck what he did to John shouldn't be legal. When Sherlock got on his knees and worshipped his cock and have mercy on him_ swallowed_, John couldn't help but moan and take it and return the favor. Captain Watson used his mouth and throat and tongue to get another bloke off. Hell had frozen over.

Sherlock was dominant, yes, but he also enjoyed being dominated. John initiating these encounters was the scarcest rarity, but it happened once or twice. And he wasn't loving or gentle or kind with Sherlock in the slightest, the detective would wake up with bruises and bite-marks and strained ligaments. John would absolutely claim him, take him and use him for his pleasure and only then would he let Sherlock come, throat choked with the effort not to beg. He didn't even need to touch Sherlock's cock before the man was abandoning himself beneath him. Claimed.

They would go back to eating take-out and tracking down murderers, firmly not talking about it. Even while Sherlock wore the marks for days after, stealthily hiding them beneath his scarf but still very visible inside the flat.

The more time they spent not talking about it, the more comfortable John felt about this whole shagging his mad flatmate thing. The girlfriends eventually faded out of the picture as months passed and seasons changed, the sex became premeditated and slower and sometimes Sherlock would fall asleep beside him after and John would lay awake until his eyes burned watching the man breath.

John was injured protecting Sherlock and Sherlock was nearly decapitated protecting John. It was like a warped codependency where if one was kidnapped the other gave bloody hell until they were located. Together they were unstoppable. Separated they were much more terrifying, finding one another always the top priority.

When they arrived back at their flat after such harrowing nights or sometimes mornings, John would be so exhausted he could barely stand but still meticulously tended to Sherlock's injuries anyway and then the detective would slowly and tenderly strip the doctor nude and they would curl together underneath a comforter like a set of mismatched puzzle pieces inexplicably slotting precisely together.

Sherlock would press his cupids-bow mouth to the top of John's vertebrae, and John would wait until Sherlock ceased trembling and they never opened their mouths to speak a word. Instead they would nip at plump lips and mesh their tongues and relearn skin and flesh and fluids and it was like dying, _petite mort_.

Occasionally Sherlock would stretch him apart and fill him to the brim and take him. John never thought he'd find pleasure from being penetrated, but Sherlock could morph things that ought to be painful and make them into the sweetest torture he's ever known. Later, Sherlock would gracefully drape himself, submissive, braced at the headboard of his bed and allow John to do the same. To penetrate him and make love to him.

Years inevitably melted away as they solved the most impossible cases, sometimes before breakfast, and fought against criminals and both of them loved it and reveled in it and cared less about outside companionship. Glued at the hip, Lestrade often said, one couldn't be found too far away from the other.

John had long since memorized Sherlock's body, every mole and scar every injection site and imperfection. His favorite place in the whole universe was buried to the hilt inside the tight channel of that genius, looking down at him and his goddamn gorgeous eyes as his chest heaved for air. Watching him come, he was always silent, they were always silent.

They never spoke on it.

They would fight. _Fuck_ would they fight, hellish rows that would last weeks on end where John wanted to punch Sherlock's impossible cheekbones and Sherlock wanted to poison John in the most painful way he knew how. John would storm off and Sherlock would panic and there was reconciliation where the sex became the best in their memory, some of the most beautiful in his entire life.

He would feed and tidy up after Sherlock and Sherlock would teach him all the tricks of his science and they would spend the random day off watching bad telly or visiting ancient crime scenes around the city.

And one day when John came home after a hellish afternoon in the ER, the flat was empty and a set of documents were lounging on the coffee table. Frowning, he shrugged his coat off and sat down. It was an application for a civil partnership. Marriage. Blinking, sure he'd misread, but no, that's what they were.

Flipping the pages he noticed all the information had been filled out in Sherlock's tidy penmanship. He'd signed and dated it that morning. A little overwhelmed for a moment, he set the sheets of paper down and brought his hand to his mouth.

They'd been partners for ten years. A goddamn decade. He hadn't dated in six of those years. They lived together, worked together, shared all their money and fucked on a regular basis. Did that mean they were in a relationship? It never felt like that to John.

But he also thought about how dangerous their jobs were. If something happened to him, or Sherlock heaven forbid. In the last month John had been kicked out of Sherlock's hospital room after he'd had a serious blow to the head. Family only. He didn't want to be married for convenience, however, and he didn't know what Sherlock meant by this. An experiment? Certainly not. They didn't joke around about their intimacy let alone make it a test.

Getting up to put the kettle on, a small black box sat on the experiments and food table.

John's jaw dropped, a 'no way' expression of surprise.

And sure as shite, it was a platinum band. Sturdy, nothing too ornate, just the sort of band John would have picked out for himself. Inside the initials SH were engraved. Placing the ring on his left hand, it fit perfectly. Of course Sherlock would know his ring size. Sighing he stared at the silver on his finger, turned back to the living room and grabbed a pen from the desk.

He signed his name in three places, _Dr. John Hamish Watson_, right beside _Sherlock Byron Holmes_. John capped the pen and wondered if he'd just authorized his own death sentence. It was getting late, nine pm, so he wandered back up to his room and changed for bed. He debated texting Sherlock but decided that the man most likely left the flat for a good reason. Who knows what went through that man's head. John turned off the light on rolled onto his back, right hand fiddling with the ring. He was asleep shortly later.

The documents were gone when he'd wandered downstairs the next morning, Sherlock in the kitchen rapidly texting and rambling off facts of the case Lestrade wanted them to see that day. John made his tea, listened, and went to go examine the dead body of a prostitute. An average Tuesday.

They never spoke about it. Life went on just as it always had. Only one tiny thing changed. Their sex life became the most scorchingly hot, sensual and utterly mind-blowing pleasure John had ever known. Sherlock kissed him like a man dying, was gentle and attentive and so needy. And it didn't matter who was the top or bottom, they did it all, burning their passion onto ever stable surface of the flat. It was as if Sherlock was telling him over and over again how much he adored John and he never had to say a word.

John wore his ring each day and he often saw Sherlock staring at it, not even bothering to be secretive. Surprisingly, only Greg and some nurses at the clinic had noticed his new jewelry, but he'd just shrugged and changed the subject.

Summer turned to winter and there was a dark period. The cases stacked on and even Sherlock was strained. They fought and they fucked and they would scream bloody murder at each other. John would shout the nastiest things he could and Sherlock would ridicule and humiliate him. Once, Sherlock accidentally slapped John during a heated argument, mostly a jerk of his arm that landed as a slap, and John left the flat.

Sherlock hated himself and John both equally when John walked away. It set him off, every nerve in his body taunt with worry and anguish. The things they fought about always seemed to revolve around the biggest problem in their relationship: lack of communication.

It figured. Their silence was what was destroying them.

But the detective always felt like he'd shown his cards when he'd left John the civil union documents. He'd been nervous that John would want to have a long overly-emotional conversation and those made him twitchy, but to his pleasant surprise he'd come home to find them all signed and dated and John fast asleep in his bedroom. Sherlock loathed discussing sentiment, and he'd thought John knew and accepted that about him.

But to him that paperwork meant something vaguely akin to you, me, co-dependency, monogamous, forever. He wasn't sure if John thought it was more for convenience.

And Sherlock would _not_ cry, very much not cry, but he would go to his bedroom, their bedroom, and curl under the comforter and wonder how long the smell of someone stays on sheets before it's completely eradicated. When he woke up around three am John was asleep beside him, turned away. Sherlock was startled and glanced at the clock, then froze.

On the nightstand was a white box, and a matching ring just in Sherlock's size. Gray-green eyes scanned the band intently in the dim light, catching the engraving and holding in his breath. JW. Feeling the knot in his throat release and something akin to sheer fucking relief thrumming through his veins, he placed the ring on his finger and pressed the cool metal to his lips. Sherlock turned and nuzzled into the back of the man's neck, lean arms wrapping tenderly over his covered body.

"Hmmm?" John asked, gaining consciousness.

"Yes," Sherlock murmured next to his ear.

John flopped over, Sherlock's hands adjusting their hold as he pushed their bodies together and buried his nose into the doctors neck.

"What?"

"I love you, I've always adored you, it's sick really. You are my whole world and I own you and you own me and let's live and die together. Work together. Retire together. I'll keep bees and you'll write the next great British novel and we'll fight and we'll fuck. It will be the whole reason I was even born in the world, really, because it wouldn't have been worth living if you weren't here!" Sherlock blurted, freezing while he waited for a response.

"Those sound like wedding words," John teased, running his fingers through Sherlock's black hair. John reached to grab Sherlock's left hand, the one with his ring. The twin bands glinted from the hallway light. John shifted even closer, mouth brushing Sherlock's ear.

"Yes," John replied, "That sounds about right."

"Okay, then?" Sherlock choked.

"Just fine."

So they had a little civil union ceremony with Ms. Hudson as their witness. They didn't go on a honeymoon or anything cliche like that, and heaven forbid they didn't take each others name or hyphenate them or any such nonsense. And they still never really talked about emotions and sentiment and their incomprehensible love for each other but who the fuck really cared? Sherlock wore his ring and John wore his ring.

They loved each other recklessly and sometimes stupidly and also somewhat viciously. Words were a moot point between them, useless and trite.

They didn't need to talk about it.


End file.
